How much could fixing West Point treatment plant cost taxpayers?

King County leaders will adopt legislation on Monday calling for an independent investigation into the failure at the West Point treatment plant.

It's been one month since water flooded tunnels and equipment at the 50-year-old plant and released 235 million gallons of stormwater and raw sewage into Puget Sound in the following 48 hours.

KIRO 7 found investigations into stormwater and sewage overflows at the plant in 2000 and 2006, both preceded by heavy rains, as was the case in the Feb. 9 failure.

Councilmember Rod Dembowski said he was told of another overflow in 2009.

"We're going to look at what's been done since then," he said of the upcoming investigation. "We're going to look at training. We're going to look at the manuals, we're going to look at the equipment, everything from top to bottom to understand what went wrong here-- whether it was mechanical or whether it was management."

KIRO 7 requested records that detail the county's insurance for the plant to find out how much money taxpayers might need to pay.

Wastewater Treatment Division Director Mark Isaacson said in one email that the initial $25 million estimate was more of a placeholder number.

"I characterized it as a very early estimate when talking to the press, as well as it likely being low," he wrote.

"We've heard the number '$25 million' thrown around as an initial number," Dembowski said. "I think it's going to be far higher than that. The type of motors we have here, the type of industrial environment we're operating in, this is going to be a very, very, very expensive repair."

KIRO 7 obtained a letter from insurer FM Global to the county's Office of Risk Management Services. In it, it states that the city has to pay a $250,000 deductible.

According to the Office of Risk Management Services, if the cause of loss is officially determined by the property insurance carrier to be flooding, the county is covered up to $250 million. The county is on the hook for all costs exceeding $250 million in that case.

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